Hello and welcome to the Lost Medals Australia blog. My name is Glyn Llanwarne and I am the founder of Lost Medals Australia. This blog complements my main website www.lostmedalsaustralia.com.
I can be contacted via email at

From Ian, Secretary of the Stratford RSL to Jude Beshears,
the Office Manager of the Victorian Branch of the RSL is a short distance in
time, what is longer though is from Charles’s death in 1965, or the death of
his wife Gladys in 1968, to now. Where has his medals been all this time and
how many hands have they passed through.

As I said at the introduction, sometimes we have to
be satisfied that returning the medals is the best we can do. So shortly the
medals will be returned to Ian, Charles’s nephew, and who it transpired when I
contacted him, is the family historian. I recently told the team of the Australian
Surname Group: “tonight I spent nearly an hour on the phone to Ian, slowly
working my way through the family tree your input had help construct. Ian
confirmed as I thought from his service file that Charlie had not had an easy
life during his military service. He had been quite ill after the war and it
was not until late in life that he married Gladys. Unfortunately they had no
children”.
When I spoke to Ian tonight uppermost in my mind was to ensure that the family
understood that if they (family) should accept custodianship of Charles medals,
then it was beholden to them to not only care for the medals but ensure that an
ongoing ownership of the medals was maintained. It is this last item, which
both Glyn and I hold strong views about. You are never ‘given’ a serviceman’s
medals, you only hold them in trust.